


a younger heart

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Series: ryan ross wrote some songs [3]
Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Gen, LONELY GOODLIGHT, Lyric Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 19:50:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan Ross wrote a song, so I wrote a ficlet. "When I had a younger heart / you taught me not to fear the dark."</p>
            </blockquote>





	a younger heart

**Author's Note:**

> Ryan Ross wrote a song, so I wrote a ficlet, but he's a real person, and I'm just an internet denizen with more imagination than sense. Please don't anyone tell him I wrote this, I'm having an RPF-nervousness day.

He and Alex are working together on this, and Ryan’s the one who has been weird and uptight and overprotective about his lyrics like he’s nineteen and taking himself too seriously again. Alex has actually been awesome, which means Ryan isn’t allowed to be pissed when Alex teases, voice light and completely free of malice or, really, any seriousness at all, “Dude, how long were you afraid of the dark?”

…

Spencer’s mom once said that Ryan was a bad influence, but they had been eight and nine then, and had only just started doing experiments with sparklers and the black gunpowder they empty out the ends of bottle rockets, and even then she’d been fighting a smile when she said it, Spencer could tell.

They’re fourteen and fifteen, now, and Spencer’s mom is more likely to look furrow-browed and concerned about Ryan than mad at him. Still, Spencer thinks it to himself in his head sometimes, _you’re a bad influence_ , as Ryan lies in the air mattress next to Spencer’s bed, rambling about Mark Hoppus and his aesthetic, like that was something people gave serious thought to, talking with his hands and flailing a little whenever Spencer starts to drift off, and he has _class_ tomorrow. Class he doesn’t particularly want to be awake for, sure, but he'll be expected to be anyway, and Ryan isn’t helping.

Spencer stares up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling and tries, “Ry? I’m kind of tired.”

“Need your beauty sleep?” Ryan asks him, but it’s barely even an actual question, he flits over th questioning inflection like it’s a forgone conclusion that Spencer will back off from this weird insistence on sleeping. “Anyway, I was thinking we could try—”

“ _Ryan,_ ” Spencer cuts in. “Shut _up_ , I can’t deal with this shit.”

“Oh. Right,” Ryan says, and it’s all Spencer needs to start feeling bad. 

Before he can think whether he wants to stand his ground on this one or not, Ryan slides out of the bed muttering, “Back in a sec,” and of course, now Spencer can’t sleep anyway. He lies there, and he waits till he hears Ryan’s weird, long, thin and feet and long, thin toes slapping lightly against the floorboard, then lets his eyes close.

When Ryan comes back in, he doesn’t close the door to the hall all the way, and then he does something a little weird. He grabs his pillow from the head of the air mattress bed, near where Spencer’s head is, and sticks it at the other end of the bed, near the door with the light spilling in. Spencer thinks he understands and wishes he didn’t.

When Ryan gets into the newly oriented bed, Spencer snakes a hand down and wraps his thumb and forefinger half way around the bony ankle sticking out the end of the unzipped sleeping bag, over the wiry little hairs, across the hot skin, almost like Ryan’s temperature runs a few degrees hotter than Spencer’s.

Ryan startles at the touch, then settles, and when Spencer squints, he can see Ryan draw the sleeping bag up to his chin, burrowing in. “Thought you were sleeping,” he mumbles, sounding a whole lot less awake than he had just moments before.

“I am,” Spencer tells him, feeling incredibly stupid and out of his depth. “Just—I’m here, right? You’re here with me, and I’m right here.”

It sounds like complete bullshit, but Ryan seems to get it. He peeps his head around the too-puffy sleeping bag to look Spencer in the eye for a moment, before dropping back onto his pillow. “I know. Thanks, Spencer. I know.”

Spencer nods, not sure where to go from there, then taps a finger against Ryan’s ankle-bone and draws his hand back. It’s only a moment before he’s asleep.

…

Ryan fiddles with the latch on his guitar case and pointedly doesn’t look up. “It’s a fucking metaphor, Alex,” he says, and when he says it, his voice is calm.


End file.
